Authoritarian deliberation revisited

Baogang He,Hendrik Wagenaar

doi:10.1017/s1468109918000257

Abstract

AbstractThis introductory paper reviews the origin and development of the concept of authoritarian deliberation, and highlights the importance of culture and cultural tradition associated with public consultation. This paper summarizes and illustrates six key features of authoritarian deliberation in China. First, deliberation in China is a precarious balance between legal rule and state intervention. Second, the Party appeals to public reason to address and manage social conflict, and develop the soft coercion that accompanies much authoritarian deliberation. Third, this highly controlled deliberative process does, however, allow the freedom of local participants to find spaces for democratic expression, and local experiments to develop elements of deliberative democracy. Fourth, authoritarian deliberation is characterized by mutual instrumentalism. Fifth, there is an importance of an administrative and policy perspective in authoritarian deliberation. Six, the concept of authoritarian deliberation is not limited to China. There is the convergence in real-world deliberative process and outcome between authoritarian and liberal democratic systems.

Highlights

TO SPECIAL ISSUE 2Authoritarian deliberation revisitedBaogang He1* and Hendrik Wagenaar2 AbstractThis introductory paper reviews the origin and development of the concept of authoritarian deliberation, and highlights the importance of culture and cultural tradition associated with public consultation
Confronting scholars with the possibility of rational communication in the bosom of an authoritarian political regime that blatantly violates human rights, inevitably led to doubts about the democratic nature of what happened at the local level in China (O’Flynn and Curato, 2015: 300; Weber and Froehlich, 2016). In contrast to these sceptical statements we argue in this special issue that the authoritarian deliberation thesis is a challenge to western theories of deliberative democracy, but that it offers a great opportunity for democracy theorists, comparative politics researchers, and public policy scholars to expand new research territories – both in authoritarian contexts, and, perhaps surprisingly, in liberal–electoral democracies
Deliberation in China is a precarious balance between legal rule and state intervention

Summary

Introduction

TO SPECIAL ISSUE 2Authoritarian deliberation revisitedBaogang He1* and Hendrik Wagenaar2 AbstractThis introductory paper reviews the origin and development of the concept of authoritarian deliberation, and highlights the importance of culture and cultural tradition associated with public consultation. These are: the guided nature of authoritarian deliberation, the soft coercion that accompanies much authoritarian deliberation, the freedom of local participants to find spaces for democratic expression, the precarious balance between manipulation and moral sincerity in local deliberation, the lack of an administrative and policy perspective in deliberative theory, and the convergence in real-world deliberative process and outcome between authoritarian and liberal democratic systems.

Results

Conclusion